Irish people went to the polls on Nov. 29 in their first general election since 2020. There had been concerns that the nation would see a far-right surge in the Dáil, or parliament, in keeping with trends within the rest of Europe. As it turns out, Ireland continues to be an outlier in this sense, with the most far-right candidates performing poorly. And while incumbent parties across Europe have suffered heavy losses this year, Irish voters appear to have returned the dominant ruling parties to power.
Since 2020, the Irish government has consisted of a coalition between the two largest parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, both best classified as center-right. They have been supported by a junior partner, the Green Party. This was a historic arrangement because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are the modern descendants of the two major parties in the Irish Civil War. That they could work together in a coalition government for a full term indicates that something has decisively changed in Irish politics.
That government faced the complexity of Brexit negotiations, a global pandemic and an escalating housing crisis. The number of people who are officially homeless is a handful short of 15,000—a figure that would have been scarcely believable just a decade ago.
Another coalition government between Fianna Fail, led by Micheál Martin, and Fine Gael under outgoing Prime Minister Simon Harris is the likely outcome. In that case either Mr. Harris or Mr. Martin—or both, if they strike a job-sharing deal—will become Ireland’s next premier, known as the taoiseach. Sinn Fein, which aims to reunify the Republic of Ireland with the U.K. territory of Northern Ireland, lacks a clear path to power because the other two parties refuse to work with it, partly because of its historic ties with the Irish Republican Army during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland.
One of the areas of significant progress since 2020 has been on environmental adaptation. Largely thanks to the Green Party, advances have been made in rural public transport and other travel infrastructure across the country and on a retrofitting scheme to move family homes toward carbon neutrality. But as is so often the case, the junior partner in the coalition has suffered an electoral backlash, and only one Green parliamentarian has been returned in this election.
Through this rocky period, the Irish economy has continued to thrive. Full employment and a huge budget surplus meant that the two senior parties were able to present themselves as competent and trustworthy, especially as global markets await with trepidation the rumored tariff hikes from the incoming American president, Donald J. Trump.
While Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael may have a long-term problem on their hands with young people angry at their handling of the housing crisis, they seem to be well-situated to negotiate a new ruling coalition. These two parties will likely have 86 seats, just two short of a majority, and can pick and choose from like-minded independent representatives to form a working government.
In a statement released at the conclusion of their winter meeting at Maynooth on Dec. 4, Irish bishops urged the newly elected members of the Dáil to form a government as quickly as possible “to provide stability to society, work to alleviate the burden on those living on the margins, and to increase housing supply for young families seeking homes.” The bishops said that the incoming leaders should be attentive to a growing public “disconnect from the democratic and political process.”
“A new model for social dialogue has to include voices which represent the whole of society, including people of faith,” they said, “so that there can be a truly inclusive and meaningful participation in the life of the nation.”
The bishops expressed particular concern about proposals that could lead to assisted suicide in Ireland, perhaps mindful of recent legislative successes on medical assistance in dying in England and Wales. “Assisted suicide, far from being an expression of autonomy, is a failure of care,” they said. “By legislating for assisted suicide or euthanasia, the State would contribute to undermining the confidence of people who are terminally ill, who want to be cared for and want to live life as fully as possible until death naturally comes.”
The Irish electoral system, called proportional representation by single transferable vote (PR-STV), may be of interest to those who are more familiar with U.S. elections. While each voter can only vote once, their vote can count many times because they are allowed to rank all the candidates in order of preference (similar to ranked-choice voting in Maine, New York City and other U.S. jurisdictions).
This is a system that really captures voters’ desires, but it means that the simple two or three-party systems common in Britain and the United States are impossible in Ireland. After all, if you ask a more complicated question, you can anticipate a more complicated answer. (The students at the Glenbeg elementary school in the coastal town of Dungarvan explain the ranked voting works in this video.)
Suzanne Mulligan, an Irish-born moral theologian at the Institute for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, called it “a very simple and straightforward process.” Describing how she ranked 11 candidates in her parliamentary district, she said, “It is literally as simple as counting 1 to 11—or whatever—in order of preference…. The only time-consuming part is going through the names if it’s a particularly long ballot.”
One of the strengths of the system is that the voter is not just expressing who they want to get in, but they can also clearly communicate who they do not want to get in. When you put a number beside a candidate, Dr. Mulligan explained, “You’re saying, ‘These are the individuals or the parties that I identify with.’... But it’s also allowing you to say, ‘These are also the people that I do not stand by and I do not want in government.’”
This quality of the system was on vivid display when it looked like Gerry “The Monk” Hutch—reported to be the leader of a criminal gang—was going to be elected in Dublin North Central. Mr. Hutch led on first-preference votes, but other voters used their preferences (and dispreferences) to elevate a Labour candidate, Maeve Sherlock, to victory.
A process resistant to conspiracy theories
Another feature of the voting system is how transparent it is. Dr. Mulligan explained that voting sites are typically in local primary schools and staffed by local volunteers without security. “One of my sisters happened to be home from abroad,” she said. “She can’t vote anymore in Ireland, but she came along with me, and she was welcome to plod around, people-watching.” Unlike the tension that seems to follow voting in other nations, “it’s a very local, friendly sort of vibe,” she said.
The votes are counted in regional centers that are also open to the public. Dr. Mulligan noted that they are “full of people, not just the individual candidates themselves but their families, their children, their neighbors.” All the counting—again, by volunteers—is done in the open so “everyone can see what’s happening and how it’s happening.”
Disputes about results are not unknown but not often the source of friction. Any candidate can ask for a recount. The resilience of the system is shown by how conspiracy theorists must resort to speculating that, as one man put it in a video widely shared on social media, local election committees are “controlled by the footsoldiers of all the establishment.”
Sam Geraghty is a mechanical engineer who lives in Dublin and volunteers to serve at count centers. When I described him as a “tally official,” he laughed and said that sounded far too formal. But what he went on to describe was the serious business of democracy.
The room in which the counting happens is arranged with a large rectangle of tables. Inside this area, volunteers count the votes while being observed by a different batch of volunteers. There is a limit to the number of people who can be in the room at any one time, but that is the only restriction on who can enter.
When each stage of the counting process finishes, the coordinator of the count (called the returning officer) announces the results with the candidates in alphabetical order. If a tally official thinks there is a problem with the process, they raise it, but the process is rarely argumentative.
“I’ve never heard of big complaints about the counting because we’re all there for the same reason: to make sure that things are happening as fairly as possible,” Mr. Geraghty said.
One of the elements of the process that Mr. Geraghty most appreciates is that “the count is a complete cross-party effort.” Officials and volunteers from all the parties that are competing for the elected offices work together to determine the result. He said that people share information and check each other’s work so that “everybody kind of bands together for that tallying.”
When asked how he would respond to people who still do not trust the results, Mr. Geraghty said he would encourage them “to just spend a day at the count center and just watch it.” He also said someone could draw a little doodle in the corner of their ballot and thereby track their vote as it moved through the different rounds of tallying.
While there are drawbacks to the system, one being that a single party is unlikely to get a majority of the national vote (though it has happened), there are intrinsic benefits as well. Nations with “first past the post” systems in which parties can win with a minority of the vote, like the United States and the United Kingdom, have experienced increasing political polarization.
Ireland, on the contrary, still enjoys a political discourse that is firmly moderate, as demonstrated by its willingness to give the incumbents another shot. Dr. Mulligan feels that the transparency and conviviality of the counting process has a real ethical value and said it “builds a degree of consensus, collaboration, collegiality—what Americans might call bipartisanship, but in Ireland there’s much more than two parties to work together—into the system.”
Ultimately, this can be seen in theological terms: The PR-STV voting system tilts Irish political discourse toward the common good.
As Dr. Mulligan put it, “You have to be willing to work with other people whom you may not fully agree with on everything they stand for.… You’re coming perhaps from a very different place politically, but you have to be able to work with them toward…a bigger objective than just what your party stands for.”
With reporting from The Associated Press
